As I said at the beginning of the week I have been working hard on a new project. This has developed out of the final exam project for the University module I completed in the last academic year; a small idea that has grown and grown, this is its beginning.

A shout from one of her clan sisters brought her back to the moment. All the clans were coming together, flying south. She had never seen so many of her own kind before, eighty at least and more shapes appeared on the horizon all the time and slowly coalesced into the distinctive shape of more lizard birds.

Most were brown like her family. Some were grey, the winter sun glinting silver off of gleaming plumage, while others still appeared to sparkle an iridescent blue, light dripping on to their feathers…

Like this:

As I said at the beginning of the week I have been working hard on a new project. This has developed out of the final exam project for the University module I completed in the last academic year; a small idea that has grown and grown, this is its beginning.

A shout from one of her clan sisters brought her back to the moment. All the clans were coming together, flying south. She had never seen so many of her own kind before, eighty at least and more shapes appeared on the horizon all the time and slowly coalesced into the distinctive shape of more lizard birds.

Most were brown like her family. Some were grey, the winter sun glinting silver off of gleaming plumage, while others still appeared to sparkle an iridescent blue, light dripping on to their feathers like raindrops. While out front, leading them all, a white queen bird flew. Continue reading →

Ethel looked at the photo it was the only image she had of her with her siblings. They were sitting on a bench happy and together. It had been taken about six months before the bomb, before their house had been destroyed by the doodlebug. Their parents had been killed, but somehow the three children had survived, hidden in the cupboard under the stairs the fireman had found them huddled together shivering and crying, but alive.

Ethel remembered the place they had been taken too, the place where all the children cried throughout the night, shouting for a family that would never come back for them. Eventually the new parents came, but they were old and felt three kids were too much and so they just took her. She last saw Gladys and Johnny when she had been taken away kicking and screaming by her new family. And to this…

Like this:

Ethel looked at the photo it was the only image she had of her with her siblings. They were sitting on a bench happy and together. It had been taken about six months before the bomb, before their house had been destroyed by the doodlebug. Their parents had been killed, but somehow the three children had survived, hidden in the cupboard under the stairs the fireman had found them huddled together shivering and crying, but alive.

Ethel remembered the place they had been taken too, the place where all the children cried throughout the night, shouting for a family that would never come back for them. Eventually the new parents came, but they were old and felt three kids were too much and so they just took her. She last saw Gladys and Johnny when she had been taken away kicking and screaming by her new family. And to this day she could still hear Johnny’s screams as she taken away. The Micklewhite’s were not bad people, they looked after her well, but they were just not her Ma and Pa and it was like having a limb removed growing up without Gladys and Johnny.

She was eighty now and she had had a good life. There had been two husbands, both now in their graves. She had raised four children and there were eight grandchildren to visit and fuss over her. But all that mattered as she sat alone in the coffee shop nursing a strong cup of coffee as the world went on its merry way outside the window, was that in a moment the door would open and Gladys and Johnny would come in, they would be together again for the first time in seventy-five years.